Murder in the Monastery
Author : Barun Chanda
Publisher : Rupa, Rs 295
Murder in the Monastery is a traditional, gripping whodunit, which makes for a breezy read that is perfect for a long journey, says KALYANEE RAJAN
A sleepy hill station, a quiet, faraway monastery surrounded by mountains and nestled in breath-taking scenic beauty, a decent-looking couple trying to reawaken their passion away from the bustle of a hectic city, surrounded by several people with intriguing lives and obscure motives, and a sensitive document with an acute incendiary potential — if knit together seamlessly, these would make a perfect recipe for a Bollywood potboiler. An urbane,new-age reader is denied precisely that feeling of fulfilment or a fitting denouement in this extremely good looking novel that aspires in vain to be a pacy adult thriller. The second book by actor Barun Chanda who dons the hats of an advertising guru, acting and writing by turns, Murder in the Monastery offers a well-executed narrative.
Placing Kolkata old hound Avinash Roy at the centre of story, Chanda seems to have drawn upon one inspiration too many: A detective who wants some moments of peace and solitude à la a Sherlock Holmes, who is surrounded by a motley group of tourists with hidden pasts put together by circumstances like Agatha Christie’s ten little soldiers, a document pertaining to the mysteries of Jesus Christ’s life which is dished out in a manner not entirely unlike Dan Brown, to name a few. Roy holidays with his beautiful but oft-neglected wife Sharmila, romping in the wilderness and recovering his lost libido, puts up at the out-of-the-way Dengziang Monastery and is rudely interrupted when he is about to make out with his wife once more, summoned by the head Lama, Lama Phunsok to help recover the missing Issah document. What follows is the sulking wife, neglected once more as duty beckons, packed off to home through her angry outbursts in chaste Bangla: “Let it ruin him…Taatetomarki?”, “Dhurchhai! You are impossible” to never reappear in the plot, having spiced up the story in the beginning with some legitimate lovemaking sequences to justify the adult tag. The ace detective Roy of course stays back in the Sikkim monastery to clean up the matter. In a poor imitation of James Bond-esque manner, Roy proceeds to make friends with the “rather attractive” Coorgi girl staying at the monastery, Miriam de Gonzales, who seems to know everything that Roy thought to be a private conversation between him and the head Lama. Miriam’s disturbing know-it-all chatter and obviously flirtatious attentions put Roy on alert, and together they narrowly escape being crushed to death by a stray boulder rolling down the hill. The episode reminds one of Sherlock missing a similar attempt on his life after Moriarty’s death, retold in the first story of “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”. The reader is given samples of Roy’s clinical observation skills throughout, as he goes about making deductions about random happenings and individuals. What plunges Roy finally into action in proper, however, are the twin murders of Miriam and Tenzing, her secret lover, within the monastery. Aided by his colleague and Assistant Pradyot, Roy and Inspector Thapa launch on a wild goose chase for the mysterious nun who slept with Miriam on her last night.
That our hero is an ageing detective, at times utterly unimaginative and clumsy, becomes difficult to get to grips with, especially in the light of Pradyot’s swashbuckling, more hands-on approach towards his work. He is not only adept at physically impressing himself upon the people he seeks to question, reminding one of CID’s theatrical and burly officer Daya, but also displays a keener sense of observation as compared to his boss. Roy’s rounding up and sizing up of the suspects is also Poirot-like: He analyses the characters and motives of all the significant characters, yoked together by fluke or by design, talking in first person, “Let us take William ‘Billy’ Ford first…” The character of the French documentary film maker Pierre Duval is somewhat lazily sketched, with lingering loose ends. Thrown into this jumble carelessly are Billy’s nymphomaniac wife who pursues him literally across the seven seas; the mousy, secretive but ultimately harmless couple; a Lama seeking revenge having been a victim of sexual abuse as a child, a Christian organisation which operates in dubious ways, and the tale of Miriam’s failed suicide attempt. The sparsely injected humour feels deliberate and lame by turns, failing to lighten up the tenor of the narrative. The character of Inspector Thapa however, offers some respite by his sheer ingenuity and typical police hound doggedness. The last quarter of the novel is the weakest link, with rough jumps and farfetched solutions cooked up rather like instant noodles, sadly, sans the magic masala.The logical what’s and wherefore’s are made frustratingly redundant as the reader is pushed into a hastily put together chase for unravelling mistaken identities, hazy motives, and the mystery of the missing document tests all the ‘incredible’ powers of deduction of the ace detective Avinash Roy. Murder in the Monastery should be read on a long journey, putting a traditional, gripping whodunit aside, befitting only a straight, breezy read.
